


December 16 (1991)

by meliore



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Bucky Barnes-centric, Gen, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Mental Health Issues, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 11:39:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16853320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meliore/pseuds/meliore
Summary: December 16 is always the worst day of the year.





	December 16 (1991)

**Author's Note:**

> so about the fandoms before anything,
> 
> bucky, and in a way his family (rebecca and his parents) and jarvis (not the canon one but something... similar) are the only actual characters of this. everyone else (rhodey, pepper, tony, steve, obadiah) is more like... only mentioned. so i considered it a captain america fic.
> 
> STILL: since this is bucky. as iron man. i also consider it an iron man fic? like it just seems to be the thing that makes sense y'know.
> 
> the warning was given. to the notes now.
> 
>  
> 
> i've been trying to write stuff and failing miserably and one of the prompts that i have in mind is this role reversal au. an au in which rhodey is captain america, steve is war machine, bucky is iron man and tony is the winter soldier. i've tried to write it before but no success on it. so today i just sat and... well, this is what i managed to do. is it bad? is it good? i don't know but it's what came out so i'm just gonna accept it and go on with my life.
> 
> so. this is bucky. as iron man. which's funny because the events that would lead to iron man's existence (not to, y'know, tony's, but iron man, the armor, specifically) haven't happened yet. only two years. or one year and some months. Yikes.
> 
> i've been down lately so if this seems too... angsty, dramatic, i don't know, it's because of that.
> 
> i think that most of the warnings that could be given are already in the tags. the only thing i could say is that bucky has anger issues, too, maybe depression and that he's Not In A Nice Situation. which leads him to a Not Nice Relationship with his family a lot.
> 
> this is unrevised. if there's anything wrong, or something that i forgot to warn, i'll correct later. i'm tired right now so i'm feeling like i can't do much.

The day.

It was a day Bucky wouldn’t--  _couldn’t_ forget.

Back then, when he used to be more open-- not enough, mom said, and he used to fight her about it, _you have no right to talk, it’s your fault I’m like this_ \-- he’d talk about it. Never turn it into a conversation. One or other comment like “it was the last thing I told her” was enough to have Stevie beginning to give one of his protective talks and-- look, he’d be the first to comfort Stevie, but he felt way too uncomfortable with it.

It was too uncomfortable to be the center of his attention. The person he looked to, not as if Bucky was a grown up who was like a brother but as if Bucky was a scared little kitten and it made Bucky _sick_ to the point where he punched holes in the wall or drank until he was back to being the flirty, happy person Stevie wanted him to be.

(Except he’d trip.)

(It’s not what Stevie wanted. It’s-- most of the time he couldn’t feel happy without some beers and by most he means every single day, except ones in which miracles happened.)

 

The day-- December 16, 1991; fifteen years ago (today is December 16, 2006; their _birthday_ ) --was… normal. Bad, yes, it sucked like any other day sucked for him, but that had been his normal since he was thirteen.

Or maybe twelve.

Yep, twelve, he’s pretty sure he drank for the first time when he was twelve.

They fought. Bucky and mom, officially. Bucky and everyone else, unofficially. Dad and mom were worried. _Worried?_ Told him they were thinking about rehab because they were afraid. _Afraid!_

He didn’t wanted to. Didn’t needed to. It wasn’t like dad never did it. He spent more time drunk than sober and who the fuck knows why.

Guilt?

What dad had that made him guilty? He was perfect. Went to the _army_ , had friends like Captain America-- dad never treated him badly, verbally or not, but he couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t hear a drunk man talking about _James Rhodes this_ or _James Rhodes that_ \-- got back from war, and look at him now. Dad wasn’t even a real veteran, just a weak scientist.

Bucky was lashing out at everything he could. He locked himself in his room like he did every time. Thought about the apartment Obadiah took him to see. A house just for him where he doesn’t needs to worry if his room’s smelling like beer or if there’s white powder in his nose. Or if someone’s gonna approach him and talk about rehab--

“ _You need help,” the same ol’ bullshit. Help. As if talking to someone could help. You know what would’ve helped, Rebecca? It would’ve helped if your parents didn’t expect their son to be a disappointment. It would’ve helped if them didn’t put it in his head that he needed to be strong just because they don’t want to pay someone to teach you self-defense._

_What the fuck am I? Your fucking dad? Oh. Man. What a nightmare. Glad I’m not him._

He was panting because he was angry because who knows why. He was always angry those days.

But she was crying and Bucky realized what he had just said to his favorite sister and what he had just said to a fucking thirteen year old kid who was just trying to help him.

\--and he’s gonna do something he’ll regret.

He kept thinking about it. How to ask for her forgiveness.

Mom knocked on the door and she was fuming and he could see. He could-- he knew that she wanted to talk about it, ~~because how dare him, how dares anyone talk like this to the perfect little kid?~~

(Bucky was the one who thought that. Also the one who felt like crying right after.)

She asked him if he wanted to do it. _Come with_ _us_ _._ Dad did it. Part of Bucky knew he did it more to the past-- to homage James Rhodes, his actual namesake, who’s buried in ice (or water) unofficially and at the Allegheny Cemetery officially-- but there was a curious part of him because dad _did_ it.

He recreated the super-soldier serum, with no help from Howard Stark-- already dead; died of old age around the 1960s-- this time. Alone.

He was going to show it privately to whoever was the host of where he was going to. To the curious eyes, he’d show a prototype of the dumb robot his son had created.

(Named dummy.)

(Bucky actually liked him, even though he dropped most of his things from the counter. Sometimes on top of his feet.)

(No inspiration taken from old stories his dad told.)

He shook his head because he…

He had no good reason.

Bucky just wanted to stay in bed all day and drink a bit. And sleep.

That was what he was doing since he had graduated and Stevie began trying to get in the army, anyway.

He told her to get out. Maybe it was that. Or maybe he told her more things and he couldn’t remember now.

He told her-- asked why couldn’t she just disappear and leave him alone.

( _Steve_ would later tell him it was normal; it was how Bucky was dealing with his anger issues and with his depression.

He didn’t talked to _Steve_ for days.)

 

He went to sleep full of anger and just wishing for them to leave him alone. Even Thomas and Carol. Who were already in the car. He didn’t knew why.

_**he did but no one needed to know that.** _

 

Anyway. It was the worst day of his life. The phone call-- 2300/11pm-- didn’t help. Obviously.

Told him it was a car accident. The road wasn’t good to drive in. Dad hadn’t drank for the first time in his life.

“And the bodies?”

Burnt. All of them. Alive.

Burnt  _alive_.

 

They weren’t recognizable. Neither was the car.

 

Bucky, officially, mourned them and isolated himself and when Steve looked like he was about to go to the army he went first.

Bucky, non-officially, cried and drank so much he was pretty sure his liver would _fail him_ soon. He isolated himself from family and from the _sorry_ and from the _we should’ve talked to them more_ and thought about killing himself.

Not a new thing, but he wouldn’t admit that.

He went to the army.

 

It didn’t help.

#

The day.

The day is December 17, 2006. 6pm.

Bucky wakes up with a headache. Feeling like vomiting the nothing he has eaten.

There is a cup of coffee. Hot. On top of the table. He smells terrible. It’s a miracle he’s not in the hospital, seriously.

Why does he even keeps doing it? It’s like that every year since then.

My Way by Frank Sinatra’s playing in the background. A very low volume.

“J,” and he acts as if this isn’t yet another thing motivated by his childhood. “If I want to hear a song I want to be able to _hear_ it.”

“I don’t think that’d be a wise decision,” he murmurs.

Bucky holds the coffee cup. Eyes the beer bottles around him. The papers he found recently.

They’re old and yellow and dirty. He wonders how such pretty things ended up like that. Who let them get dirty in a box instead of appreciating them. Still, dirty and old and yellow or not, they are drawings of an armor. Drawings which  _Tony Stark himself_ did.

“It’s also not a wise decision to be my ally, but you are my ally anyway.”

He acts like he doesn’t hears the sigh.

 _Bucky_ , who doesn’t even exists anymore but Stevie will get sad if he notices it, acts like a lot of things are in a certain way when they’re not. It got worse after coming back.

His childhood was not spent reading Captain America comics. Not spent thinking he’d grow up to be James Rhodes in personality just because that’s what dad said and because he was responsible like him. Not spent with troubles going to school or just being himself because he was angry because dad couldn’t get over his guilt or grief.

His teenage years weren’t spent drowning himself in alcohol because that’s what dad did and it helped and if he drank enough he wasn’t going to scare Stevie or Rebecca with his anger (unless they made him do it; then it was going to be scarier than anything else they had ever seen). It was--

He just did _it_ with girls who wanted to do it with him and he did the logical thing to do, regarding Captain America: hating someone he never knew just because his father was so much less disappointed by him.

Bucky didn’t do that. James did. The one that wasn’t perfect and that was too deep in his own issues to help other people or to even realize what girl he was doing _it_ with this time.

The fucked up one. Well. Both of them are the unloved son at least.

“Ms. Potts is approaching,” he straightened himself and nodded.

Yep. That armor thing. He was going to-- not do it, but…

See what he could do.

“Tell her she won’t like how I smell,” or how hypocritical he could be. Really. If dad was a drunk, what was him? “And to send new flowers to Rebecca. You know which ones.”

“Purple hyacinths?” he nodded. “Will do.”

#

December 15 is always the day that he fears the most in the year (because he knows what's coming). December 17 is always the one day in which James goes from  _rehab_ to  _I'm fine_ non-stop, the entire day.

 

December 16 is always the worst day of the year.

**Author's Note:**

> i headcanon bucky's family as a loving one. both of his parents love him. but i also have this headcanon in which bucky kind of feels pressured to be protective and brave and strong and never show emotions SPECIFICALLY to protect younger people than him that he's close to (his siblings, steve) because of his parents (a headcanon in which they repeated that he needed to be strong and everything since he was a little child and it stuck to him).
> 
> so guess this is just a... version of what could've happen in one au in which this headcanon's the... canon.
> 
> i also headcanon bucky as someone who has troubles with the bucky vs james thing. not even including the winter soldier and hydra, just like... james is how he really is. the love for his family and friends is there and he's also flirty but bucky is that strong figure that never fails and james is scared of things like failing to protect the ones he love, showing weakness... i don't know why. it's also not my only take in his character, i guess. just a headcanon i have.


End file.
